


Brienne of Tarth and her importance as a literary character

by janie_tangerine



Series: in which I stash meta/essays/everything that's not fanfic [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Book 2: A Clash of Kings, Book 3: A Storm of Swords, Book 4: A Feast for Crows, Brienne is the Best, Character Analysis, Essays, Meta, Multi, Nonfiction, Why Brienne Is Important As A Character Damn It, take it from me ;), yes this is about how brienne is important representation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:51:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: In which I meta-ed and spent an unholy amount of words doing some acok/affc text analysis to empathize the point of Why Brienne Of Tarth Matters As A Literary Character And Why She's Extremely Important Representation.





	Brienne of Tarth and her importance as a literary character

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY GUYS SO more spitefics are coming soon, but: in light of, er, recent show developments that made me sadly realize that only one person in the writing room read both J and B's chapters and that person is not either of the showrunners, I decided that I'm taking the chance to dump on Ao3 the book meta stuff I had both on tumblr and not so I have it archived somewhere.
> 
> Now: I had originally written this along with a longer piece focused on the Jaime/Brienne relationships for an essay collection I gave Gwendoline Christie when I met her at a con last year, I basically put this, the J/B part and a few other cleaned/re-elaborated essays from tumblr into that and brought it over to her. (She was absolutely delightful about it all, Best Con Experience Ever ngl.) I was in mind of going fully with it and write a part also about her rship with Catelyn and maybe put the whole thing together as a way longer piece of meta about Brienne as a character and her most important relationships but I haven't had the time or means to do it yet, and since again I'm disappointed in We Know Who not getting the characters they're writing and Brienne means a lot to me, like, _a lot_ , and on a relate-to level she means to me more than any other literary character around and I have feelings about it, I figured I'd post it on here also because Ao3 allows meta. ;)
> 
> This one meta is more about Brienne and tangentially about her relationships with the three people above plus her betrothals plus Reasons Why She's Important The Way She Is In The Books As Representation For NonStandard Attractive People Especially Women. The following part was me basically going through asos/affc and dumping a bunch of text analysis about her and Jaime's interactions - I'll publish that one too in a subsequent installment soon. ;) For now have this. The J/B one is following and then probably I'll just stash most of my tumblr book-related meta on here for safekeeping but there's time for that I guess. Have fun with my ranting I suppose. ;)
> 
> DISCLAIMER: this meta is obv. choke-full of asoiaf quotes but they're there because I need to prove a point, nothing belongs to me, everything is GRRM's and I own nothing.

 

> Catelyn turned to see the end of it. Only four men were left in the fight now, and there was small doubt whom king and commons favored. She had never met Ser Loras Tyrell, but even in the distant north one heard tales of the prowess of the young Knight of Flowers.  (..)
> 
> Two of the other survivors had made common cause. They spurred their mounts toward the knight in the cobalt armor. As they closed to either side, the blue knight reined hard, smashing one man full in the face with his splintered shield while his black destrier lashed out with a steel-shod hoof at the other. In a blink, one combatant was unhorsed, the other reeling. The blue knight let his broken shield drop to the ground to free his left arm, and then the Knight of Flowers was on him. (…) The white horse and the black one wheeled like lovers at a harvest dance, the riders throwing steel in place of kisses. (…) Ser Loras rained down blows on his head and shoulders, to shouts of "Highgarden!" from the throng. The other gave answer with his morningstar, but whenever the ball came crashing in, Ser Loras interposed his battered green shield, emblazoned with three golden roses. When the longaxe caught the blue knight's hand on the backswing and sent the morningstar flying from his grasp, the crowd screamed like a rutting beast. The Knight of Flowers raised his axe for the final blow.
> 
> The blue knight charged into it. The stallions slammed together, the blunted axehead smashed against the scarred blue breastplate ... but somehow the blue knight had the haft locked between steel-gauntleted fingers. He wrenched it from Ser Loras's hand, and suddenly the two were grappling mount-to-mount, and an instant later they were falling. As their horses pulled apart, they crashed to the ground with bone-jarring force. Loras Tyrell, on the bottom, took the brunt of the impact. The blue knight pulled a long dirk free and flicked open Tyrell's visor. The roar of the crowd was too loud for Catelyn to hear what Ser Loras said, but she saw the word form on his split, bloody lips. _Yield_.
> 
> The blue knight climbed unsteady to his feet, and raised his dirk in the direction of Renly Baratheon, the salute of a champion to his king.  (…)
> 
> "Approach," King Renly called to the champion.
> 
> He limped toward the gallery. At close hand, the brilliant blue armor looked rather less splendid; everywhere it showed scars, the dents of mace and warhammer, the long gouges left by swords, chips in the enameled breastplate and helm. His cloak hung in rags. **From the way he moved, the man within was no less battered. A few voices hailed him with cries of "Tarth!" and, oddly, "A Beauty! A Beauty!" but most were silent**. The blue knight knelt before the king. "Grace," he said, his voice muffled by his dented greathelm.
> 
> The press had begun to open up. "Ser Colen," Catelyn said to her escort, "who is this man, and **why do they mislike him so**?”
> 
> Ser Colen frowned. "Because he is no man, my lady. That's Brienne of Tarth, daughter to Lord Selwyn the Evenstar.”
> 
> "Daughter?" Catelyn was horrified. (…)
> 
> **Beauty, they called her... mocking**. The hair beneath the visor was a squirrel's nest of dirty straw, and her face ... Brienne's eyes were large and very blue, a young girl's eyes, trusting and guileless, but the rest ... her features were broad and coarse, her teeth prominent and crooked, her mouth too wide, her lips so plump they seemed swollen. A thousand freckles speckled her cheeks and brow, and her nose had been broken more than once. **Pity filled Catelyn's heart. Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman**?
> 
> And yet, when Renly cut away her torn cloak and fastened a rainbow in its place,  **Brienne** **of Tarth did not look unfortunate. Her smile lit up her face, and her voice was strong and proud** as she said, "My life for yours, Your Grace. From this day on, I am your shield, I swear it by the old gods and the new." **The way she looked at the king—looked down at him, she was a good hand higher, though Renly was near as tall as his brother had been—was painful to see**.

 

Brienne’s first appearance in the books, in Catelyn’s _A Clash of Kings_ chapters, pretty much tells us everything we need to know about her for background information, even if of course we don’t know the entire story behind it (yet). In order:

 

  * She’s initially mistaken for a man (both by Catelyn and the reader), and a _very good fighter_ since she fights off three people at once;
  * She is _not_ favored by her peers as no one is happy or cheers for her when she wins the melee beating _the actual favorite_ ;
  * This is because she’s a woman _and_ she’s an ugly one, and the two things are not separated and cannot be as we’ll see shortly, and she’s ugly also because she has a masculine build in the first place;
  * She’s called _Beauty_ mockingly but no one dares doing it to her face (because they know she could overpower most people who did);
  * She _doesn’t_ conform to any beauty standard — wide mouth, broad features, crooked teeth, too many freckles and a broken nose don’t usually make for any canon regardless of how much it changes with time, and Catelyn, who is a fairly empathetic character _and_ also a woman, _pities_ her for it, because ugly women are _unfortunate_ as for them it’s most likely harder to find a husband and they’re judged for it, and Catelyn would know, being a woman herself:
  * She _doesn’t look unfortunate_ as she asks for her prize, as in, a _place in the Kingsguard of the king she means to serve_ when _she’s been introduced as someone who wants to be a knight_ , which is a typically male-coded job;
  * She’s in love with Renly and it’s _painful to see_ for anyone paying attention (and most likely also because she has trusting and guileless eyes, so we can also surmise that she’s not much of a good liar), so she’s actually entrusting her life to the man _she_ loves… without being loved back (book readers by now know that Renly is in love with Loras in the first place), and she _knows_ it, but still is the happiest when winning her cloak.



 

So, from the very first moment, we know that she’s a woman who has most likely put ten times the effort of any man to be in the place she is, that she aims to be a good knight and that she takes her oaths extremely seriously, that she’s _ugly_ and therefore her life is made even more complicated, and we can also deduce that she might have taken the decision to be a knight because society would have no place for someone looking like her, if she chose to be a proper lady… which would have most likely make her _unfortunate_ , as Catelyn thinks.

We can deduce all of this from just her introduction, but it takes getting to Brienne’s _A Feast For Crows_ chapters to see what exactly did it mean for her:

  

> "I never knew such a mistrustful maid as you.”
> 
> Brienne curled up beneath her cloak, with Podrick yawning at her side. **I was not always wary, she might have shouted down at Crabb.** **_When I was a little girl I believed that all men were as noble as my father. Even the men who told her what a pretty girl she was, how tall and bright and clever, how graceful when she danced_**. It was Septa Roelle who had lifted the scales from her eyes. **_"They only say those things to win your lord father's favor," the woman had said. "You'll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men."_**
> 
> It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game. A maid has to be mistrustful in this world, or she will not be a maid for long, she was thinking, as the rain began to fall.
> 
> —
> 
> Him. **His voice was a punch in her stomach, his face a blade in her bowels**. "Ser Hyle," she said stiffly.
> 
> "Best let her by, lads," warned Ser Hyle Hunt. "This is Brienne the Beauty, the Maid of Tarth, who slew King Renly and half his Rainbow Guard. **She's as mean as she is ugly, and there's no one uglier** (…)”
> 
> —
> 
> When Renly donned his crown, the Maid of Tarth had ridden all the way across the Reach to join him. The king himself had greeted her courteously and welcomed her to his service. Not so his lords and knights. Brienne had not expected a warm welcome. She was prepared for coldness, for mockery, for hostility. She had supped upon such meat before. **It was not the scorn of the many that left her confused and vulnerable, but the kindness of the few. The Maid of Tarth had been betrothed three times, but she had never been courted until she came to Highgarden**.
> 
> Big Ben Bushy was the first, one of the few men in Renly's camp who overtopped her. He sent his squire to her to clean her mail, and made her a gift of a silver drinking horn. Ser Edmund Ambrose went him one better, bringing flowers and asking her to ride with him. Ser Hyle Hunt outdid them both. He gave her a book, beautifully illuminated and filled with a hundred tales of knightly valor. He brought apples and carrots for her horses, and a blue silk plume for her helm. He told her the gossip of the camp and said clever, cutting things that made her smile. **He even trained with her one day, which meant more than all the rest**. She thought it was because of him that the others started being courteous. More than courteous. At table men fought for the place beside her, offering to fill her wine cup or fetch her sweetbreads. Ser Richard Farrow played love songs on his lute outside her pavilion. Ser Hugh Beesbury brought her a pot of honey "as sweet as the maids of Tarth." Ser Mark Mullendore made her laugh with the antics of his monkey, a curious little black-and-white creature from the Summer Islands. A hedge knight called Will the Stork offered to rub the knots from her shoulders.
> 
> They had a wager.
> 
> Three of the younger knights had started it, he told her: Ambrose, Bushy, and Hyle Hunt, of his own household. As word spread through the camp, however, others had joined the game. Each man was required to buy into the contest with a golden dragon, the whole sum to go to whoever claimed her maidenhead.
> 
> "I have put an end to their sport," Tarly told her. "Some of these ... challengers ... are less honorable than others, and the stakes were growing larger every day. It was only a matter of time before one of them decided to claim the prize by force."

 

The moment we have access into _her_ head, we learn that once she _didn’t_ think of herself as ugly… until someone she trusted (her septa) told her that people lied if they told her she _wasn’t_ , and about started destroying her notions that she might ever be good at dancing, that she might be pretty and that she might be clever (it shows _very_ prominently in her chapters as she thinks that she _feels stupid_ in a lot of instances, and never thinks of herself as… well, _not_ ugly or as worth anything beyond her knightly skills). And _this_ is an extremely common experience in between people who _weren’t_ thought beautiful or pretty even while young — someone informing them of the supposed actual truth, whether it’s a peer or an authority figure, is sadly a common occurrence and Brienne is no exception to it. But she thinks it was worth learning that lesson which caused her immense suffering… because then people actually bet on convincing her of the contrary.

What Catelyn doesn’t know when Brienne is introduced is that not only men in the camp don’t like her, but that some of them actually courted her to the point where she actually thought they were interested before she found out that they actually bet money on who’d get to take her virginity first. Now, not taking into account that in _this_ case it’s an especially low thing to do because Brienne is still a noblewoman and regardless of her choices in trade, her virginity _would_ be something an eventual husband would societally expect of her, so if it had come to pass she would have found herself in an extremely unpleasant situation… but _overall_ , it’s the kind of experience that causes an endless number of trust issues in anyone. And again, it’s an extremely common experience in between people perceived as not standard attractive to have people come up and profess interest just to see ‘if you’d fall for it’ and thinking nothing of it. Brienne, regardless of how much time passed, when hearing the voice of the man that she _might_ have chosen, thinks that _his voice was a punch in her stomach, his face a blade in her bowels,_ which is certainly nothing pleasurable — all the contrary. It’s also a testament to how good of a person she is that she accepts to travel with him and comes to — if not forget it — forgive him for it, but it’s still an extremely traumatizing experience especially for someone who thinks of themselves as undesirable. So, _this_ is the circumstance in which she has won the melee at Renly’s camp: hated by most men around her because she’s better than them, and after having been tricked by a fair amount of them into thinking they might be interested in her just to pull a seriously cruel move on her. But why is she at _Renly_ ’s camp?

We find that out in depth in another of her _A Feast For Crows_ chapters:

 

> "A woman freakish big and freakish strong who hides her own true colors. Creigh, behold the Maid o' Tarth, who opened Renly's royal throat for him.”
> 
>  
> 
> "That is a lie." Renly Baratheon had been more than a king to her. **She had loved him since first he came to Tarth on his leisurely lord's progress, to mark his coming of age. Her father welcomed him with a feast and commanded her to attend; elsewise she would have hidden in her room like some wounded beast. She had been no older than Sansa, more afraid of sniggers than of swords.** They will know about the rose, she told Lord Selwyn, they will laugh at me. But the Evenstar would not relent.
> 
>  
> 
> **And Renly Baratheon had shown her every courtesy, as if she were a proper maid, and pretty. He even danced with her, and in his arms she'd felt graceful, and her feet had floated across the floor. Later others begged a dance of her, because of his example. From that day forth, she wanted only to be close to Lord Renly, to serve him and protect him. But in the end she failed him.** Renly died in my arms, but I did not kill him, she thought, but these hedge knights would never understand. **"I would have given my life for King Renly, and died happy," she said. "I did no harm to him. I swear it by my sword.** "

  

So, she was in love with Renly… _because he danced with her and made her feel beautiful like a proper lady_. Which was pretty much what anyone decent behaving with correct manners would have done, but turns out that by the time she was thirteen she was so adjusted to the contrary that someone showing her the mere minimum of courtesy was enough to make her want to die for him. _This_ is also sadly not uncommon as far as experience for non-standard attractive people go (as in, to fall for the first person that treats them nicely or the way they wish to be treated), and the fact that by that point she was already proficient with swords and knew she wanted to be a knight (because she couldn’t be a lady and no one would let her be) naturally means that she _would_ want to be _Renly’s_ knight, if she couldn’t be his lady. She entirely means it when she says she would have been happy to die for him and she sees his death as a personal failure she cannot get over (and she _hasn’t_ been over it by the time _A Feast For Crows_ is over). Also, what’s important to note from this one passage is that Brienne actually doesn’t hate feminine things nor is doing what she does because she doesn’t want to dance or be a lady: she actually would enjoy it as much as being a knight… if people _let her be either_. Instead, people _don’t want her_ to be either but since she’s way better off being a knight then she doesn’t even try to act the lady, because she has tried and only ever got made fun for it except for that one time.

Still, she has staked _everything_ on her knightly skills, as in something she _knows_ she’s good at regardless of her appearance or whatever negative assumptions she has about herself:  
  


> "Look at them. They're young and strong, full of life and laughter. And lust, aye, more lust than they know what to do with. There will be many a bastard bred this night, I promise you. Why pity?”
> 
> "Because it will not last," Catelyn answered, sadly. "Because they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming."
> 
> "Lady Catelyn, you are wrong." Brienne regarded her with eyes as blue as her armor.
> 
> **_"Winter will never come for the likes of us. Should we die in battle, they will surely sing of us, and it's always summer in the songs. In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining."_ **
> 
> Winter comes for all of us, Catelyn thought. For me, it came when Ned died. It will come for you too, child, and sooner than you like. She did not have the heart to say it.

 

That is one of the key sentences to understand _why_ Brienne does what she does and why she is so fixated on knightly oaths, and after all it shows exactly why for her being a knight is actually a _good_ option: even death means immortality because one gets to be in _songs_ that then aren’t forgotten in the ages, and _the songs are always better than reality_. As we saw, Brienne is _well-_ aware that songs aren’t real life (differently from Sansa who has to learn that life is not a song), but because songs are _better_ and everything is embellished she can hope to end up in one where the sun is always shining and where _all_ knights are gallant and _all_ maids are beautiful… and she’s _both_ of them, so in a song she could have what she doesn’t in real life and what she thinks she can’t achieve. And that’s why she vows to live by that code — if she’s gallant and a good knight in real life, she can hope to _also_ be sung of as such in the songs… which would in turn make her beautiful.

This is _extremely_ telling if we know that later in the books she’s going to end up in a situation that’s entirely song-worthy (the bear pit in _A Storm of Swords_ , which will be discussed thoroughly in the second part of this collection) _and she actually won’t be the knight in it but the lady_ , and her life will be saved by the one man she runs into who doesn’t try to flatter her but then actually comes through for her after she comes through for him… when they didn’t even _like_ each other. She _will_ end up in a song-worthy circumstance (and most likely there’s a chance she will again by the end of the series as she’s coded as the _one_ true knight in the entire series who doesn’t have to strive for it), she just doesn’t know yet. That said this sentence also betrays how naive she still is at this point regardless of everything, since another striving theme of these books is that _most_ knights are actually… _not gallant at all_ and she’s actually the most shining example of chivalry in the books, except that no one takes her seriously for it.

 This is actually one of the most important thing when it comes to how Martin deconstructs tropes when it comes to Brienne: she literally is the _one_ person in the books who takes upholds chivalric ideals and _lives_ by them and who actually has the skills to match them — she’s strong, she can fight, she’s extremely proficient at it and she actually fits all the requirements asked out of a knight _officially_ in Westeros, as we can see from the two occurrences in the text of knightly investments:

  

> In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women...
> 
>  
> 
> “Do you swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, to fight bravely when needed and do such other tasks as are laid upon you, however hard or humble or dangerous they may be?”

  
Brienne fits _all_ of those notions: she’s brave, she’s just and she literally goes to her death to defend _young and innocents_ and a whole lot of women among them, as we can see in one extremely revealing passage in this sense in _A Feast For Crows_ :

 

> The door to the inn banged open. Willow stepped out into the rain, a crossbow in her hands. The girl was shouting at the riders, but a clap of thunder rolled across the yard, drowning out her words. As it faded, Brienne heard the man in the Hound's helm say, "Loose a quarrel at me and I'll shove that crossbow up your cunt and fuck you with it. Then I'll pop your fucking eyes out and make you eat them." The fury in the man's voice drove Willow back a step, trembling.
> 
> **Seven, Brienne thought again, despairing. She had no chance against seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice.**
> 
> **She stepped out into the rain, Oathkeeper in hand**. "Leave her be. If you want to rape someone, try me."

 

She _does_ defend people who can’t defend themselves too, throughout all of _A Feast For Crows_ if we don’t want to count Jaime as well during their captivity and time together, as we said she _does_ protect women and children, has certainly _tried_ to obey both her king (Renly) and her liege lady (Catelyn) regardless of how she eventually couldn’t, she’s fought bravely since her introduction and _before_ then, for others and for herself, and she’s about the _one_ example in these books of living by that code without faltering and keeping on going with it even when she learns things aren’t as black and white as she thinks thanks to Jaime… _but no one takes her seriously for it_ bar three people (her father, Catelyn and Jaime, with Renly as a possible fourth contender but it’s fairly clear that he wants her around because she’s loyal and skilled, not because he actually sees her full worth) and she’s seen as a joke at best and a danger at worst, and she’s discouraged from it at every turn… _but she keeps on going and doesn’t care_ , which is one of her most admirable and inspiring qualities — not everyone is so bent on following their dreams to spend their life suffering for it and getting almost nothing but scorn in return while remaining generally a good person. And this also from _before_ realizing that if she can’t be the lady she can be the knight, since as we’ve seen she’s had to endure people scorning her for about everything since she was young.

For that matter, it’s also telling to see the history of her prospect marriages — of course, since she’s a noble lady and her father’s only heir, he did try to marry her following the usual plan, but all three of those betrothals end up badly.

First betrothal:

 

> Brienne had been betrothed at seven, to a boy three years her senior, Lord Caron's younger son, a shy boy with a mole above his lip. They had only met the once, on the occasion of their betrothal. Two years later he was dead, carried off by the same chill that took Lord and Lady Caron and their daughters. Had he lived, they would have been wed within a year of her first flowering, and her whole life would have been different. She would not be here now, dressed in man's mail and carrying a sword, hunting for a dead woman's child. More like she'd be at Nightsong, swaddling a child of her own and nursing another. It was not a new thought for Brienne. **It always made her feel a little sad, but a little relieved as well.**

  

This is the only one she doesn’t remember in extremely traumatizing terms — her prospect husband, who was apparently not someone she disliked, died of a fever and it never came to pass, and while she feels relieved that it spared her from an extremely feminine-coded role (which in the year she’s internalized as something that’s not meant for her), she feels _a little sad_ that she never had the chance to try it, so we can deduce that she actually _wouldn’t_ mind having children or being someone’s wife… but everyone convinced her that no one would want her for herself or could give her some happiness in that role, so she’s glad she missed on that. We can also add that at this point she’s around nineteen years old, which for Westeros noble standard is _extremely_ late when it comes to marriage and children — within a year of her first flowering means around sixteen at latest and she thinks that she’d have had _two_ children already if it had happened, so it’s likely to assume that at this point she thinks she will never have that chance and made peace with it.

Second betrothal, to Ronnet Connington:

 

> She remembered a day at Evenfall, and a young knight with a rose in his hand. He brought the rose to give to me. Or so her septa told her. All she had to do was welcome him to her father's castle. He was eighteen, with long red hair that tumbled to his shoulders. She was twelve, tightly laced into a stiff new gown, its bodice bright with garnets. The two of them were of a height, but she could not look him in the eye, nor say the simple words her septa had taught her. _Ser Ronnet. I welcome you to my lord father's hall. It is good to look upon your face at last_.
> 
>  She tried to greet him as she had been instructed, only to have blood come pouring from her mouth. (…) "Brienne the Beauty," he said in a mocking tone. "I have seen sows more beautiful than you." He tossed the rose in her face.
> 
> In the mêlée at Bitterbridge she had sought out her suitors and battered them one by one, Farrow and Ambrose and Bushy, Mark Mullendore and Raymond Nayland and Will the Stork. She had ridden over Harry Sawyer and broken Robin Potter's helm, giving him a nasty scar. **_And when the last of them had fallen, the Mother had delivered Connington to her. This time Ser Ronnet held a sword and not a rose. Every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss_**.
> 
>    
> \--  
>   
> 
> 
> Ser Ronnet was a landed knight, no more. _For any such, the Maid of Tarth would have been a sweet plum indeed_. “How is it that you did not wed?” Jaime asked him.
> 
>  “Why, I went to Tarth and saw her. I had six years on her, yet the wench could look me in the eye. **She was a sow in silk, though most sows have bigger teats. When she tried to talk she almost choked on her own tongue. I gave her a rose and told her it was all that she would ever have from me**.” Connington glanced into the pit. “The bear was less hairy than that freak, I’ll—”

 

This is the worst one — we learn the backstory from Jaime’s _A Feast For Crows_ chapters but we can see from hers that she has internalized it as an _extremely_ traumatic experience since the man in question humiliated her in public to the point where she can’t even _see_ roses without feeling rage:

 

> Loras Tyrell had been the last to face her wroth that day. He'd never courted her, had hardly looked at her at all, **but he bore three golden roses on his shield that day, and Brienne hated roses. The sight of them had given her a furious strength.**

   
  
The man — who had come to _her_ house, not the contrary — has disrespected her as well and not even cared to not hurt her feelings when she had been obviously ready for rejection (at this point she _would_ be aware that her looks aren’t considered a catch) and given that in her memories she reads as extremely shy and uncomfortable, and what she got in return was insults to her looks as she most likely expected… and _she actually took great pleasure in beating him on the field later_ with blows sweeter than kisses. If she hadn’t before, _this_ is probably when she decides that if no one else will be her own knight in shining armor _she_ will be it, so we can also understand how she is _so_ bent on living up by chivalric ideals: it’s not just because she honestly believes in them and she sees them as a honorable code of life, but they’re pretty much her coping/defense mechanism for a _lot_ of the toxic behavior she had turned on her and to deal with the issues and insecurities it caused her.

Third betrothal (to Humfrey Wagstaff):

 

> Lord Grandison's castellan had once made that error. Humfrey Wagstaff was his name; a proud old man of five-and-sixty, with a nose like a hawk and a spotted head. The day they were betrothed, _he warned Brienne that he would expect her to be a proper woman once they'd wed. "I will not have my lady wife cavorting about in man's mail. On this you shall obey me, lest I be forced to chastise you_.” She was sixteen and no stranger to a sword, but still shy despite her prowess in the yard. **Yet somehow she had found the courage to tell Ser Humfrey that she would accept chastisement only from a man who could outfight her. The old knight purpled, but agreed to don his own armor to teach her a woman's proper place. They fought with blunted tourney weapons, so Brienne's mace had no spikes. She broke Ser Humfrey's collarbone, two ribs, and their betrothal.** He was her _third prospective husband_ , and her last. Her father did not insist again.

 

The third betrothal shows exactly how that happened — we can already surmise that it was a kind of last effort attempt since the previous two were young men close to her in age while this one is older and not especially charming (a nose like a hawk and a spotted head don’t sound too great against long red hair admittedly), and his condition to marry her is that she gives up the one thing that makes her happy and gives her fulfillment. And while she’s _still shy_ , she finds it in herself to tell him that then he should beat her first, she’s taken as a joke and he assumes to teach her her place… and finds himself with a broken collarbone, and that’s the end of her prospective husbands. She has _quite literally_ been her own knight in shining armor for the first time and we can see that it did work since then she’s certainly not shy when it comes to do it to her former betrothed nor to anyone else. She’s hasn’t just gone on with her life letting herself be miserable for not fitting into the role she should cover: she’s tried to actively give it some meaning by doing something she’s _good_ at regardless of getting even more scorn for it.

And _this_ is actually what makes her not only unique but an extremely important character, because usually so-called ‘ugly’ female characters happen to either be the kind of ugly that can get fixed with some make-up or the right clothes or taking off her glasses, and usually the point of their story is finding out that they can actually be beautiful, everyone else notices and suddenly their (bad) life before the metamorphosis changes to a good life after it, and _that_ is seen as something that has to happen before they either find love or other people finally see them for what they always were. This _doesn’t_ happen with Brienne. Actually:

 

  * Brienne isn’t ‘so-called’ ugly — as we saw, her looks aren’t really anything that would pass for fair in any context, especially because the point is that she has a masculine build and she’s tall, with little curves and no breasts on top of every other unflattering trait, and as her story goes on it gets _worse_ because on top of that half of her face gets bitten off;
  * That ugliness _effectively_ prevents her from being happy in her supposed societal role which she technically wouldn’t even mind (she doesn’t hate dancing or wearing dresses per se nor rejects the idea of being a mother, she hates that _other people made her feel like she wasn’t fit for them_ ) to the point where she has internalized that her looks will automatically prevent her from finding happiness;
  * When she finds out that _something_ exists (being a knight) that would fit her because she has the right built for it and gives her an out to make something good out of the traits everyone scorns her for, she takes it up and _never gives up on it_ regardless of how much people keep on scorning her for it;
  * This is admittedly also her coping method — if she can’t be a lady then she’ll be the knight and end up in those songs where everything is always better than reality and heroes get to live forever, but she’s also pretty much choosing between to extremely hard paths. If she _didn’t_ do it, she’d be forced to marry someone who’d only see her as an incubator and would only care for her title _if_ they did (and it wasn’t enough for at least her second prospect husband) and most likely be unhappy for the rest of her life. But by _doing it_ , she has to live in between men who don’t trust her, don’t take her seriously, hate the fact that she’s better at it than they are, risks being raped at every corner (in Renly’s camp _and_ with the Bloody Mummers later _and_ during her travels) and she’s entirely too aware of it (as we’ll see, the moment Jaime saves her from it is when she truly starts shifting her opinion of him in a substantial manner) — it’s not easy and it’s not a fairytale and it’s more suffering than joys (and for her it’s a series of failures because Renly dies in her arms and Catelyn is murdered when she’s not there with her), but _she still goes on and keeps on doing it_ because she knows it’s her life calling and she’ll die trying to fulfill it;
  * And this while she has to fight her own issues as she sees herself as not particularly smart, not a catch aesthetically (of course) and her self-esteem is so nonexistent that she fell for the first person who danced with her and paid her some basic respect to the point where she’d have died for him, and when she ties her own worth to her skills to the point where she can’t bear the thought of failing the people she swore to protect and she’d die rather than doing it, which is… admittedly _not_ healthy, and she most likely will have to find a balance for it in the remaining unpublished books in the series, but it doesn’t stop her from following her dreams, as hard as it is.



 

This is honestly groundbreaking when it comes to this kind of character because we have an all-around _not attractive_ woman who will _never_ be attractive according to societal standards and instead of getting a makeover becomes even less attractive for that matter, who is shown as having _serious_ issues that are all to blame on trauma caused by the toxic society she lives in (and again, her experiences aren’t at all strictly to blame on her environment — they’re extremely common for not standard attractive people in the modern era as well) and trying to deal with them in ways that can border on unhealthy. Also, she’s depicted as someone fundamentally good and beautiful _inside_ , she’s a true paragon of virtue and everything good that exists about chivalry, who will follow her dreams regardless of how many people (including the ones who hurt her previously) try to stop her or regardless of how society tries to punish her for escaping her role (in which she’d have been most likely unhappy regardless), who can see the good in other people, who _will_ change her mind and abandon prejudices behind when faced with being wrong and _will keep on going on being a good person regardless_ and who won’t let her looks stop her from trying to achieve what she yearns for and some shred of happiness, and she’s not going to need a makeover or for anyone to find her beautiful to do it, and nothing cancels her issues or trauma or downplays it. At the same time, she’s not shown as some mindless drone who only cares about fighting — she has feelings, she gets hurt and stands back up, she falls in love with people she knows won’t love her back and deals with it, considering that being courted _flattered_ her it’s obvious that at least at that point she still had hopes someone might see her as desirable or want her for herself, and even when she’s let down on that, too, it gives her worst trust issues… but _doesn’t stop her_ from pursuing her dreams nor from trying to be the best person she can be, and she doesn’t let that turn her into the worst version of herself.

And that’s pretty much the crux of it: this is really not common to see in media, and so-called not attractive girls don’t really have many examples telling them that looks don’t really matter and don’t have to matter, that their dreams are worth being followed even if those looks are in the way or if people can’t see beyond them, that their experience and pain tied to them is valid and causes lasting damage (it’s fairly common to be asked if ‘being called ugly is such a hardship’, for that matter) but that doesn’t have to stop them from trying to get what they want, be it validation or anything else. Brienne shows exactly all of that, and that’s why she’s an extremely important character beyond her role in the plot of the series — she’s one of a kind when it comes to embodying this kind of experience and it would be truly amazing to have more characters like her in mainstream media in general, and that’s just for what concerns _herself_ , not her relationships with other people. And _that_ specific issue concerning her romantic life (or lack thereof… for now) is also another reason why she’s actually groundbreaking in her character and her story.

 Specifically: Brienne is _not_ the stereotypical female warrior character who seems to always be described as not wanting nor needing romance in her life. Admittedly, she doesn’t _need_ it and her character doesn’t revolve around it, but at the same time she’s shown as openly _wanting_ it — a part of her regrets not having had children while thinking that ship has sailed for good, but as she’s _unfortunate_ looking she might never have it and so she’s better off doing something she’s good at, she falls in love with Renly, she’s flattered at being courted, she _does_ take notice of how attractive or not the men who court her are, she obviously knows her love songs same as any other, and while she thinks she’ll never get it… she still _wants_ it and doesn’t see it as something that makes her weaker or that she needs to repress, she merely accepts that her feelings won’t be returned. Now, it’s not healthy that when it came to Renly she was willing to die for him _knowing_ that and not even looking for another option, but as we already saw not all of her coping methods are actually healthy in the first place. That stated, when the series start this is established: she isn’t seen as desirable by any of the men she meets whether she wants them or not, her looks are derided, people bet on taking her virginity, she’s told that the only way people might want her is with the lights turned off and just because she can give them children, she was openly disrespected by both people she was betrothed to with one of them humiliating her in public and the others wanting to take from her what made her happy. 

And _then_ when she meets Jaime Lannister, the development of their relationship not only is clearly coded as romantic as we will see later, but regardless of how it will end, the narrative presents her as _a viable interest for him_ and presents an extremely attractive guy as someone who _will_ give her exactly what she wants and needs.

Specifically, when they meet they _don’t_ like each other for a hefty amount of reasons, so neither of them has put the other on a pedestal or sees them as _better_ than they actually are — if anything, the contrary. When they get to know each other and are forced together into extremely traumatic situations during which they have to rely on each other, they get closer to the point where they establish an extremely intimate bond that brings Jaime to actually tell _her_ and no one else his most closely guarded secret that he never trusted anyone else with and brings her to reconsider a lot of her views on life and knighthood. They learn to respect each other and see each other for the people they _really_ are and not by their respective looks or fame, and at the end of it they both push each other to change for the better all the time. Jaime not only recognizes her as his peer, but he also sends her on a quest with a priceless sword therefore giving her exactly everything a wannabe knight might actually want, and Brienne shows him that _someone_ can still be a good and honorable knight and makes him understand he can actually be that person still.

They save each other all the time respectively, culminating in the already mentioned episode where he saves her life in the bear pit putting her in the position of not having to be her own knight in shining armor while _she_ is his knight in shining armor (or without) for pretty much the rest of the time.

 Regardless of anything else, we have a situation where an ugly woman is coded and presented as a viable love interest for an extremely attractive man who doesn’t care for her looks and actually finds them not so repulsive at all even if _they don’t change_ and she doesn’t get a makeover and who respects her for who she is and actually gives her means to keep on pursuing her dreams rather than hinder them, which is absolutely _not_ common. On the other side, Jaime himself has his own issues and is also an extremely damaged person in himself, and the person who actually helps him through them and gives him a push to try and start overcome his trauma is someone who might not be aesthetically pleasing but sees the person he really is and cares for _that_ , not for his looks or status or his skills. On top of that, there’s a continuous role reversal and deconstruction of gender roles going throughout their time together, which also makes them an extremely uncommon pair (for one, she’s taller and with wider shoulders than he is, aesthetically he’s of course the attractive one, she’s often coded in the masculine role but he really doesn’t care and actually _likes_ it), and it’s one of the few relationships in the books that starts rocky and ends up helping them both become better people rather than the contrary. And within the context of Brienne’s storyline, if she wasn’t groundbreaking enough in herself, the fact that she’s presented as the viable love interest of an extremely attractive man that _she’s also attracted to_ and who sees beyond her looks _while she herself sees beyond what others wrongly assume about him_ , including his own family, makes her even more unique because not only she’s shown as also _wanting_ romance in her life… but she might actually get it without needing a makeover and just being herself.

And _that_ is an extremely important thing to put on page. Non-attractive women don’t have that kind of role model very often, but to have recognized not only the issues that come with not being standard attractive _and_ the fact that regardless of looks it’s possible to run into someone that _will_ see them for who they really are and for whom _they_ also might be a good match is something that’s nowhere near common enough, and hopefully with the series having become more and more mainstream it might happen more often. But as it is, Brienne is truly an amazingly conceived and written character because there’s no shying away from the damages that toxic beauty societal standards create but she’s also not boxed by stereotypes _and_ she’s seen as someone entirely deserving of giving and receiving love, of earning what she wishes for and of following her dreams regardless of how much society wants her to fail, and this is also why her presence in the series is an enrichment of it — not just for what she brings to the plot or to the ongoing deconstruction of tropes in Martin’s work, but also for what she brings to any reader who might see themselves in her and might find inspiration in her story.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Brienne of Tarth and her importance as a literary character [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21892453) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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